DisplayPort 1.3 Makes 4K At 120Hz A Reality

December 10, 2015September 5, 2016by Dan Hamilton

2016 is nearly upon us and with it will come the arrival of monitors with DisplayPort 1.3. This is all in an effort of pushing us forward to a new standard with higher refresh rates and resolutions. This new iteration of the DisplayPort interface will allow for bandwidth data transfers of 32.4Gbps which is a tremendous increase from its previous cap of 21.4Gbps and over 80 percent more than what HDMI 2.0 is capable of pushing. With it 4K resolution monitors will be able to run at 120Hz while 1080p and 1440p resolution monitors will be able to run at 240Hz. AMD expects that by the winter of 2016 there will be 4K monitors capable of 120Hz, be equipped with FreeSync, and be compatible with Low Framerate Compensation. Below you can see a table summarizing at what refresh rates each monitor resolution will be able to run at next year.

Resolution

Standard Dynamic Range

High Dynamic Range

1920 x 1080 (FHD)

Up to 240Hz

Up to 240Hz

2560 x 1440 (WQHD)

Up to 240Hz

Up to 170Hz

3440 x 1440 (UWQHD)

Up to 190Hz

Up to 144Hz

3840 × 2160 (4K)

Up to 120Hz

Up to 60Hz

5120 × 2880 (5K)

Up to 60Hz

From AMD’s announcement, it’s obvious that many of the monitors that will be released next year will feature High Dynamic Range (HDR) which means that they will have the capability to produce greater contrast and higher brightness than previous Standard Dynamic Range (SDR) monitors. This allows for better color reproduction and as a result a more realistic looking image. In order for monitors to qualify as HDR compatible, they have stiff standards that they must meet. The brightness of the monitor should be least 600 cd/m2 whereas most gaming monitors nowadays are advertised as being at around 350cd/m². It should also have a contrast ratio that’s near human visual sensitivity and have a 10-bit color display which is 21 billion colors in total. Additionally, we should note that users will need to make sure their graphics cards are from AMD’s Radeon R9 300 series to take advantage of HDR.

With the introduction of brighter monitors, we should see built in motion blur reduction features become more prevalent and more useful. Previously many monitors that carried this feature had too much of a brightness loss to justify it being turned on. With an increase in the overall amount of the brightness that the monitor can display this issue should be a thing of the past.